Kim du Toit -- winding down his blogging career, with a planned retirement date about 100 days out -- speaks to ladies associated with metrosexual men. Shy away from the men who wear mascara, he warns!
...[M]ore interesting was the number of women who told me that they had once been attached to metrosexual men, but soon tired of them, and tossed them aside for men who were, well, men and not ur-women. And were now as happy as could be, content in their role as women, while the men were being men, and the women loved them for it.
In fact, although I know that mnost of my Lady Readers are attached, and well so, to Real Men, I would suggest that if any casual Lady Reader is unhappy with their current relationship, they should check for signs of metrosexuality in her partner. If the Metro Quotient is high, I would bet money that the lady’s unhappiness would disappear if she tossed the girlyman out of her life, and found instead a man who was not afraid of being a man.
If we're giving advice to young ladies on this subject, here's mine. Today was hot. My dog was hot, and panting hard. Finally I had to stop the truck, open up the back, take off my Stetson and pour a pint of water into it for my dog to lap up. When he was finished, I put the hat back on my head and we finished the drive home.
This is the proper use of a Stetson. Heck, it comes with instructions printed right on the liner.
If your man won't do that for his dog, he may not be the right man for you. Proverbs 12:10.
While I compose the next piece for discussion, a video that clarifies something of what I intend to say. This is the difference between sport and fighting, in spite of the ring, in spite of the rules. I've been sent this video by about a dozen of you folks:
As with the law, it's really the spirit of the thing that matters.
My new motherboard arrived last night, accompanied by a Dell service representative who had never seen a dirt road before. Apparently there was some error at the factory with the old one, and it burned out cleanly; but so far, the new one works fine.
Dell seems to have moved its help center to India (along with the rest of the tech industry), and the experience of dealing with them is much like what you'd expect. However, once they determined (in the step-by-painful-step method that such call centers employ) that the error was indeed critical, they arranged to send someone to the house. The experience was painless: I borrowed the wee wife's computer for email and so forth, and now I'm back.
So: it looks like I need to sit down and read through an excellent discussion in the "On Sport" post, before I go further. I should leave you folks alone more often!
...the peasantry will play. Full disclosure: this is going to be an utterly mindless post.
When the Editorial Staff were expecting our first grandchild (promptly dubbed "The Burrito" by his father upon arrival) we only half-jokingly began suggesting Manly Names for the prospective grand-progeny. Can you tell we were hoping for a boy? Since our eldest boy is of the law enforcement persuasion, our first Helpful Suggestions were "Law" and (our personal favorite) ...
[drum roll]
..."Justice".
Inexplicably, our well thought out contributions were heartlessly disregarded. Apparently, the offspring had their own ideas about what our grandchild should be called. The *nerve* of some people.
This is what we get for all those years of loving care and attention. O! How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is, to have a thankless child...
/hand to forehead
But hope springs eternal in the grandmaternal breast, and so we have not given up. There is always the chance of further rugrats down the road. Consequently, we were gratified to see this list of The Manliest Names in the World, and even happier to see it included one of our fav actors.
Check it out. And feel free to suggest a name for our next grandchild in the comments section.
Due to a dead motherboard in the computer, I'll be away for what I hope will be a short bit. I regret the timing, as I had what I hoped would be an interesting series of post prepared for this week; but we'll get back to it as soon as we can.
As the Olympics continue, we see some sports that were originally martial in origin. This reminds us of the Laches, in which Socrates is asked whether practice fighting in armor can actually build the courage needed for real fighting in armor. It was a critical question to Greek city-states whose survival depended on producing that kind of men: it remains a critical question.
The video is from A Knight's Tale, which (by the way) I suggest as an entertaining film. The film makes a highly risky choice in its musical score: so-called classic rock, in a Medieval setting. I fully expected to hate not only the music but the movie as a consequence, but in fact it comes off wonderfully. The film uses mostly tracks that are frequently used in modern American sports, and the effect is to make the emotions felt by Medieval characters immediately relevant to modern audiences. The film has a small amount of the usual Hollywood preaching about how we ought to feel on social issues, and a somewhat overwrought ending; but those are minor flaws. It is generally a good film, one you'll enjoy viewing again and again.
The part relevant to this discussion begins at 07:25 (although some of you, most especially Cassandra, will enjoy the earlier parts). Notice how, when "Ulric" is to strike, he does so at first with care, in a martial fashion: but after his first victory, he becomes increasingly flashy, showy, doing things (like turning his back on his foe) that no one would do in combat.
It is just that quick that the spirit of the thing is lost. Masters have made this mistake.
In Autumn Lightning, Dave Lowry writes about being instructed in Japanese swordsmanship by an old teacher from Japan. One night, after long practice, the sensei tries to convey the point.
"The swordsmanship we do, that is nothing. What is cutting with a sword? If I have an atomic bomb now, it will melt your katana and you.... We keep the Yagyu Shinkage tradition alive for another reason than fighting. Because it is like--" he paused, reaching for the right word, "it is like an antique that is living. Because we have the ryu [school of teaching], we have something of the past. We can depend on it. All the bugeisha in the old days, they are just like us. Same problems, they loved and hated, just like we do. Since they went before, they are an example for us."
In fact, the man who practices a fighting art to preserve it, as a moral guide, is doing nothing like what the samurai was doing. The samurai wanted to kill. He would change anything about his technique, in an instant, if it gave him an advantage. The man who carefully preserves kata is the opposite of him. The man who seeks to preserve unchanged the techniques as a moral lesson is nothing like the man who would change any technique for a momentary advantage.
Yet it is possible to be "like" the fighting men of old. It is possible to learn courage by practicing fighting in armor. In coming days, we'll talk a bit more about this: and perhaps I'll finally get around to answering Eric, who has long said that "chivalry" was largely a romantic ideal, whose forms we have mostly of the 19th century.
We looked at an article on Sen. Obama's faith the other day; here's one on Sen. McCain's. It's a very different kind of faith -- less intellectual, and less public:
Although polling suggests voters view faith as an essential ingredient in a president, McCain has never been a candidate to invoke God or dwell on religion. "In our case, faith is private," said his wife, Cindy, adding that once voters get to know him, "they will know he is a man of faith."
I thought this was remarkable:
About six months later, they were back in the ironically named Hanoi Hilton, and Day, the senior officer, chose McCain as the group's chaplain. His first lesson — he doesn't like to call them sermons — recounted the biblical story of the man who asked Jesus whether he should pay taxes. Jesus replied, "Render unto Caesar what is Caesar's, and render unto God what is God's."
McCain's point was that the prisoners should not pray for freedom, nor for harm to come to their captors.
"What I was trying to tell my fellow prisoners is that we were doing Caesar's work when we got into prison, so we should ask for God's help to do the right thing and for us to get out of prison if it be God's will for us to do so," McCain said. "Not everybody agreed with that."
I imagine not! Yet it is a highly plausible reading, and one achieved against personal interests and while under extraordinary duress.
That's a fair set of big Hollywood names, thrashing a well-known and influential filmmaker. You don't see this kind of infighting very often. I may have to go see this movie, just since it has my (very) distant relative George Patton as a character.
I get about three of these conspiracy-theory mails a week from friends and family. I think I can honestly say that I've been diligent in pointing out the holes in them. I'm certainly opposed to Sen. Obama's election as President, and ready to use any true and fair weapon that comes to hand against him; but not untrue or unfair ones.
I normally know what to say about them, but I got one today that one I don't have an answer for. Probably some of you have seen it, and know what to say:
An AP photo appears to show Obama's school registration in Indonesia, listing his religion as Islam. I see that Obama's Fight the Smears page doesn't mention it, though it denies that he was "raised as a Muslim."
So: is the photo real? Does "not raised as a Muslim" mean that his father in law stepfather [UPDATE per ML: see comments] may have considered him a Muslim, but nobody else? Or just not him? Or what?
Edward Luttwak Strikes Again!
Goodness knows we've had our disputes with, or about, the writings of Edward Luttwak. His COIN theory drew a rebuttal from David Kilcullen (and a harsher response by Frank Hoffman that suggested he 'was off his medication'); his piece on "leaving the Middle East alone" provoked some arguments here as well (and another rather rude rebuttal). The comments to those pieces, even here at the Hall, have been contentious. One describes one of his works as a book "so bad I tried to make my officers read it so they could recognize a bad thesis when they saw it"; but another of our co-bloggers found his work sometimes "excellent" and sometimes, well, not.
So it is with some trepidation, metaphorically at least, that I offer his latest barn-burner. Called "A Truman for our times," it is a work strongly praising the foreign policy of George W. Bush. Not that it is entirely kind:
The swift removal of the murderous Saddam Hussein was followed by years of expensive violence instead of the instant democracy that had been promised. To confuse the imam-ridden Iraqis with Danes or Norwegians under German occupation, ready to return to democracy as soon as they were liberated, was not a forgivable error: before invading a country, a US president is supposed to know if it is in the middle east or Scandinavia.
Yet in the end, Luttwak asserts, the problems will not be remembered: what will be remembered was that Bush was the man who threw back Islamism in the Muslim world, made it unacceptable to support in public among the leaders of Muslim states, and made great strides in denuclearizing the dangerous parts of the world.
I see Cassidy is in a panic over her male/female rating. No need to worry! The program is very poorly designed. To get an accurate reading, it would need to look at a far broader range of websites in your history than it does.
For example, if it finds a lot of stuff like this in your history, you're probably male:
"MapQuest"? It's really not that reliable an indicator by comparison.
A. Sin is any want of conformity unto, or transgression of, the law of God.
From the Baltimore Catechism:
Q. 278. What is actual sin?
A. Actual sin is any willful thought, word, deed, or omission contrary to the law of God.
From Senator Obama:
Q. Do you believe in sin? OBAMA: Yes.
Q. What is sin? OBAMA: Being out of alignment with my values.
Presumably, the Senator meant to say something like "one's own values," which is a highly contestable definition -- but still a far kinder reading than, "Sin is when one doesn't align with my values."
In fairness, however, read the whole interview. They ask some very difficult questions. It might be worth trying to see if you can answer them yourself. There are a few I would want a long time to consider.
A far more serious confession is here:
OBAMA: When I’m talking to a group and I’m saying something truthful, I can feel a power that comes out of those statements that is different than when I’m just being glib or clever.
GG: What’s that power? Is it the holy spirit? God?
OBAMA: Well, I think it’s the power of the recognition of God, or the recognition of a larger truth that is being shared between me and an audience.
That’s something you learn watching ministers, quite a bit. What they call the Holy Spirit. They want the Holy Spirit to come down before they’re preaching, right? Not to try to intellectualize it but what I see is there are moments that happen within a sermon where the minister gets out of his ego and is speaking from a deeper source. And it’s powerful.
So bear in mind: Obama really does think that, at least some of the time, the Holy Spirit is moving him when he speaks.
That's a bold statement: that a politician's work is like a minister's; that he is doing God's own work, and speaking words inspired by the Holy Spirit.
I am not sure why I get RNC emails, since I know I've never sent them any money; maybe they share mailing lists with the NRA or something. Anyway, is this really a good idea?
I guess they just mean 'victory in this year's elections,' but the word "victory" has a very different connotation right now. That fact can't be avoided. A lot has been paid for the victory we've won in Iraq. It is a word that should be used, but solemnly.
Probably this is meant as innocent fun, perhaps like the Purple Heart band-aids of a few years ago. As with that, though, there is a failure to consider how it would look to those whose minds were drawn to the war the symbol must necessarily invoke. Good intentions cannot answer for everything.
Hunting used to be one of those skills that was always wanted for soldiers. The Roman author Vegetius explicitly mentions the desirablity of enlisting huntsmen in his De Rei Militari 1700 years ago. The Greek author (and soldier) Xenophon, wrote On hunting some 800 years before Vegetius, in which he says:
Therefore I charge the young not to despise hunting or any other schooling. For these are the means by which men become good in war and in all things out of which must come excellence in thought and word and deed.
Arts & Letters Daily has several background pieces on the conflict that are worth reading. Because they don't do permalinks, I'll list them here: one from the New York Times, one from the Washington Post, and a second from the New York Times.
Gwendolyn, in the comments below, offered this, which I see is also endorsed by Michael Totten (himself en route to the Caucasus region).
Charles King, in the Christian Science Monitor, has a perspective on the conflict that would like to offer conditional support to Russia. I pass it on out of respect for the publication and a willingness to hear everyone out.
Looking a bit more into the sword site, I found this video:
It starts simply, but moves on to show some sword-binding and maneuver techniques. If you follow it to its YouTube page, there are a number of similar videos that demonstrate accurate Medieval martial arts.
One of the best ones is this (which is also noteworthy for its subtitles):
This shows a great deal of knife and dagger techniques, the fundamentals of which have not changed. Those interested in bladework may find these most amusing, and may find a few concepts worth thinking about to employ in your own training.
